La gestion participative des forêts en Afrique centrale

Abstract

Participatory management, like any policy, can be considered as a concept, a policy practice and an actors-oriented issue. The poor results found in the Congolese Basin where this approach to rural development is experienced over the past thirty years are discussed in this article. The authors emphasize on the complexity of the mechanisms underlying the difficulties identified and begin their analysis with a triple point of view: that of the aid organization, the socio-political context and the power relations involved. From a historical and ethnographic point of view, they discuss the performance of four « participatory » funding and five participatory mechanisms. Based on a cross-sectoral analysis, they show that this policy is generally a antiparticipative governance. The article ends with the imperative of good knowledge on social contexts of implementation of participative approaches and monitoring empirical practices of participative management and of an effective rural development.

Keywords

• participatory management
• natural resources
• decentralized taxation
• private sector
• community forest
• community hunting area